


The plan

by AniZH



Category: Victorious
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-08 03:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11638206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AniZH/pseuds/AniZH
Summary: It’s a normal day at Hollywood Arts, with all the usual craziness. And of course there also is a girl flirting with Beck once again until Jade scares her off. After school, that same girl gets her hand hurt though. Quickly, students start to believe Jade did it. Especially when more girls get attacked after they also flirt with Beck.





	1. One down

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> This is my new fic which will have nine chapters – some will probably be really short. This might turn out to be one of the longest chapters of the fic. Because everything will be so short, I should be able to update once to twice a week.  
> Well, what to say? This is not like the other things I write, generally. So not just Bade fluff or whatever. Aaaand I kind of erased Jade’s father for this. I just couldn’t figure out how to use him for this and I have her mother instead and... yeah... (I also didn’t give her a brother like I usually do – and whom she also canoncally has.) I hope everything else is good enough, that it’s still fine. :)  
> Now I wish you fun with the first chapter!

It’s just another day at Hollywood Arts.  
Tori almost has had a nervous break-down before first class when they have asked her about how the production of her big music video is coming along. Andre isn’t able to find good lyrics to his new song and has pressured himself so much about it, that he can barely form a coherent sentence whenever you even get close to the topic today. They caught Cat ordering something from SkyStore during second break, though she has promised one and a half years ago to never do that again, after she was so addicted to it. And Robbie is in a text fight with Rex, who stays home more and more, and just keeps rambling angrily about it all day long.  
Beck enjoys the craziness of his friends sometimes, but he’s still happy that Jade has promised him to vanish somewhere together for lunch. That’s something he’s always more than willing to do.  
But first, it’s another class, though they at least are spending that together.  
He looks over to her locker as he walks to his own. They always go to that class together.  
She isn’t there yet, but he wants to get the stuff from his last class out of his bag first anyway.  
He starts with just that, when Josephine steps up to him. They share several classes and talk every now and then. Now, she greets him smiling: “Hey, Beck.”  
“Hey,” he answers.  
“Can you help me with something?” Josephine carefully asks.  
“Sure,” he says because why not? He’s always ready to help out if he can.  
“You know that homework in our history class,” Josephine starts and he makes a short noise to show that he knows. “There is this one question that I didn’t fully get.”  
She pulls her paper out of the bag and steps right next to him, comes close, so they can look at the paper together. She shows him the question she doesn’t understand and he explains it to her, but also tries to take a step back again because she is standing too close. The locker is right next to him though. And he can’t really push her away, can he? He’ll just quickly finish explaining and then she will be on her way anyway, won’t she be?  
Though now, she turns to him, still standing so close, putting her hand on his arm as she thanks him. He smiles back at her as he tells her she’s welcome, and he already knows Jade wouldn’t like this. She probably wouldn’t even approve of him telling Josephine that he can indeed help her. Which he doesn’t understand but he does get if this is going too far for her. He also never likes it if any guy thinks he can get too close to Jade – luckily, she easily pushes every guy except him away. He somehow isn’t able to do that with the girls approaching him, he never knows where to draw the line.  
He wants to leave the situation now, as he’s done helping Josephine anyway, so he can easily step forward and walk over to Jade’s locker, so the other girl won’t be right next to him anymore, when Jade suddenly has arrived in the hallway and sees them.  
“Get away from him,” she immediately and very clearly says and Josephine does take two steps away now with a scared face.  
“I’m sorry,” she quickly says and Jade glares at her as she says in a threatening tone: “Don’t touch him again. Or talk to him at all.”  
“You know, he can make his own decisions,” Josephine softly says.  
Beck is ready to stop Jade if she jumps on Josephine. Depending on her mood, she can escalate quite easily.  
But she doesn’t attack and instead just spits out: “Leave, or I will seriously hurt you.”  
Josephine has apparently no trouble believing that and hurries away. Jade glares around and Beck just now catches that a few people in the hallway have watched them and now quickly look away.  
Only then, Jade looks back to Beck and says: “You suck.”  
And promptly, she walks further to her locker.  
Beck takes a deep breath, before he follows her and defends himself: “Come on. There was nothing going on.”  
“You don’t even believe that yourself,” she darkly says.  
“Okay, we possibly stood too close. But it wasn’t my fault.” It wasn’t like he wanted her to be so close to him, like he encouraged her or anything.  
Jade glares at him and says sarcastically: “And you totally couldn’t have told her to leave you alone.”  
“She asked me for help with her history homework,” Beck reasons. “Should I have said no?”  
“Yes,” Jade spits out and shuts her locker before she walks away, to their next class.  
Beck hurries to walk beside her, reminding her: “We’ve been over this again and again.” That he is a person to help out, that he won’t stop talking to other girls just because they are together. That not every girl approaches him to flirt with him, but there are some who just want to make small talk or something – like Tori and Cat do.  
“Yeah, and you don’t get that all of them want you to themselves,” Jade says though and she claims that so often, has done so for years, since they are a couple.  
“Even if that was so,” Beck answers like he has done so many times before. “There still never happened anything and it never will. You know you can trust me.”  
He does believe strongly that she trusts him. She knows he wouldn’t cheat on her. She does believe that he flirts around, that he likes the attention of the other girls. And she still hates if another girl thinks she can get anywhere with him, despite him being together with Jade.  
“You could still tell them that, so they get that you aren’t available,” Jade tells him as they sit down in their next class.  
And everybody in this school knows he isn’t available. But he doesn’t want to fight right now and he knows that sometimes he should draw a line sooner. Maybe, he should’ve told Josephine himself to take a step away, instead of just accepting it. It had felt too close.  
“I know. I’m sorry,” he therefore says and leans over to her. “I love you.”  
She may make an “ugh”, but she does return the kiss.

 

Robbie is at his locker the next morning, making sure he has everything in his bag for the day. Rex usually helps him with that, but as he has decided to stay home again...  
“How is Joe?” he suddenly hears next to him. Erica has walked up to Hannah, who’s at her locker next to Robbie’s and looks distraught, as Robbie now notices, glancing to her.  
“I think she’s still shaken,” Hannah softly answers.  
“I can’t believe she got attacked. And not even mugged?” Erica says, unsure.  
“Yeah,” Hannah slowly says. “Someone apparently just wanted to do something bad to her.”  
And Robbie has to ask: “What happened?”  
He gathers they have to talk about Hannah’s best friend Josephine. Robbie likes her. They share a few classes. The conversation he has overheard, unsettles him. And normally, Rex would have asked the girls, but he isn’t here and he does want to know what’s up.  
Hannah usually doesn’t talk to him, has always been annoyed by Rex, but this must have really shaken her and she answers: “Josephine went on her usual run yesterday and apparently, someone just jumped her and crushed her hand. She wasn’t able to see, who it was though, because it was dark and it went over so quickly.”  
“Spooky,” Erica says, holding her own body. “After her parents told me when I asked why I couldn’t reach her though we had to talk about a project, I even was afraid for my mom, who still had to go out. I nearly didn’t sleep that night. There are a lot of idiots out there.”

Robbie hears a few other girls, who have also heard by now, ask Hannah about Josephine right before he goes to lunch, so naturally, it’s fresh on his mind when he sits down with his friends.  
Andre first has to tell them that he’s on the verge of finding the lyrics for his song though. When Tori asks him if he already has a line, he instantly tells her to be quiet and that he doesn’t want to talk about it, which isweird as he has started the conversation.  
But that allows Robbie to now asks his friends: “Have you heard about Josephine?”  
“I have,” Cat says, immediately pulling a sad face.  
Beck and Andre meanwhile look at him questioningly, while Jade keeps picking at her food bored.  
Tori asks, worried: “What about her? She isn’t in school today, is she?”  
Robbie tells: “She was assaulted yesterday when she went on her run.”  
“That’s horrifying,” Tori immediately says, looking at him in shock, as does Andre.  
Cat now softly says: “They bruised her hand, almost breaking it. They just pushed her to the ground and stepped on it and then left her there.”  
Robbie hasn’t heard that. He hasn’t known how exactly Josephine has been hurt. But he knows: “She wasn’t even able to see her attacker.”  
Tori shudders. It’s Jade, who dryly says: “Well, she always runs in the dark.”  
“What?” Tori asks confused. Robbie also doesn’t know how that statement came to be.  
Jade explains, bored: “Naturally, she wasn’t able to see her attacker. And honestly... Not that I think that a victim is at fault, but if you run at night every single day, you should be able to protect yourself.”  
Well... Josephine does go running every night. Everyone knows that. She is someone extremely athletic, does a lot of sports.  
And that’s where Robbie stops at: “She’s good at sports though and should be able to defend herself. It probably just went too fast.”  
Tori’s mind meanwhile stopped somewhere else: “She does go running every night, the exact same route. Everybody knows that, right? You don’t think someone attacked her specifically?”  
Andre answers: “There are a lot of idiots out there, but attacking someone and like... crushing their hand and apparently doing nothing else? That sounds like a specific attack.”

They talk about other stuff again after that, but somehow, it’s back on Tori’s mind when she goes back into school. It’s not like she hasn’t heard about much worse attacks before – her father is a member of the police force after all.  
But she has just seen Josephine yesterday, they are in the same year, in a lot of the same classes and that attack just sounds so random. She somehow has a bad feeling about it.  
She’s still in thought about that, getting herself a drink from one of the machines before the next class, when she catches Sonia and Romy talking close-by, almost whispering.  
“Do you think the rumors are true?” Romy just now asks.  
“About Jade having done it?” Sonia makes sure.  
Tori sees Romy nodding and she has to interrupt: “What are you talking about?”  
Sonia and Romy startle as they see her. Sonia’s answer comes unsurely: “Oh, uhm... I don’t know if we should tell you. You are friends with Jade.”  
“You can definitely tell me,” Tori assures them.  
Sonia and Romy share an uncertain glance, before Sonia says though: “Well... Have you heard about Josephine?”  
The bad feeling inside of Tori from before worsens. She has somehow known this would be about Josephine, maybe because she has just thought about it anyway. But how should Jade be involved?  
“Sure,” she just say, waits for answers to come.  
Sonia is the one to say it: “You know... There are people saying that Jade did it.”  
Tori looks around the hallway with all their classmates standing and wandering around. Who says so? But more importantly: “Why should she have?”  
Romy explains: “Josephine has been pretty close to Beck yesterday. She hasn’t really flirted or anything but... we all know how Jade reacts to that.”  
“But she has never done anything to anyone,” Tori immediately defends her friend.  
“Well, she has,” Romy says though. “She has jumped different girls, when they have flirted with Beck. And maybe, she told herself that enough is enough.”  
Sonia adds: “Hannah says that Josephine told her, when they talked on the phone during first break, that someone stepped on her hand with a boot. Jade wore hers yesterday, didn’t she? And it apparently is Josephine’s left hand. I have seen them together myself yesterday and... she did touch Beck with exactly that hand.”  
Tori has a dreading feeling. “That’s nonsense,” she says anyway. “Jade wouldn’t do something like that.” Because she never would and just can’t have done it.

Yet, at the end of the school day, not even 24 hours after the attack, everyone in school seems to have heard that rumor and some also seem to believe it.


	2. The punch

Josephine isn’t back the next day, which is a Friday; everyone still talks about it though. It irritates Tori to hear many classmates claim that Jade must have done it, but when she witnesses Jade ignoring a few of the girls whispering about that close to her, though she must notice, Tori follows her example and just ignores the rumors as well, as do their other friends. They all know better and Jade doesn’t care what other people think.

Josephine comes back after the weekend, her left hand bandaged, and of course, everyone is all over her.  
Hannah barely leaves her side that day, as her best friend. But Tori also catches a lot of other people talking to her. Just now, about five of their classmates are standing with her and Hannah close to Tori’s locker.  
“Have you seen your attacker at all?” Tori can hear Sean ask.  
Josephine answers: “No. It went so quickly. I was ready to defend myself right after they stepped on my hand but they were already gone then.”  
“That’s scary,” Leena says. Which Tori silently agrees to. Of course, it could’ve been much worse and maybe she wouldn’t really have been able to defend herself. But this attack just sounds so damn random, which makes it scary as well.  
Sean meanwhile asks: “Have you reported it to the police?”  
Josephine hesitates shortly, seeming unsure, before she says: “Yeah. I didn’t really want to, but my parents told me I have to.”  
Tori doesn’t get that and has to cut in, stepping closer now: “Why didn’t you want to?”  
Josephine looks at her with big eyes. “No, I mean... It’s just that I don’t know what the police is able to do. And it’s awful to have to tell them that something happened but you don’t really know what. I didn’t saw my attacker after all. And honestly? It has only been my hand.”  
“I think it’s good when the police looks into it,” Leena says and Tori also has to agree to that silently. She definitely would have reported it to the police herself – not that she would have had any kind of choice with her own father being a police officer.  
Though she also knows due to her father being who he is, that indeed it won’t be of too much use to tell the police about this. If there were not witnesses, there is barely anything they can do.

 

Everything calms down a little again until Wednesday. Not that Jade cares much. She doesn’t care about any of the idiots in school and hates Joesphine.  
There are girls she hates more though. Like Sonia, who is just now holding her up, talking to her about their shared biology class, where Jade has presented the results of an assignment she was given. Sonia apparently didn’t understand everything. Jade so doesn’t care, but Sonia still tries to get her to explain it to her once more. Ugh.  
Sonia just is this annoying kind of... nothing. She has just the right amount of every character trait and Jade finds it nauseaous to talk to her.  
She feels even more nauseaous though when she arrives in the room of her next class, having gotten rid off Sonia on the way, the class about to start.  
Beck and Andre are in that same class and are already sitting on their chairs, with Andre sitting to Beck’s one side and the chair of the other side still empty for Jade.  
In front of Beck’s table talking to Beck (and Andre at least also listening, though probably not too involved in the talk) is Romy, leaning down a little as if to try having her breast appear bigger – und to let Beck have a better look at it.  
“You will look so good in that costume,” she just now says to Beck.  
“We’ll see,” Beck answers, looking straight up her face, not at her body at all.  
Romy smiles. “I just wish I would play your counterpart.”  
Of course she is talking about that play Beck has been casted in by Sikowitz a week ago. She auditioned for the female lead; and didn’t get it because she is an awful actress.  
“Well...” Beck answers nonresponsively and that’s enough.  
Jade harshly cuts in, while she finally steps up to her own table and drops her bag there: “Piss off.”  
Romy turns around in shock and promptly scatters to her own seat two rows to the front.  
Jade sits down on her chair and crosses her arms.  
“Hey, babe,” Beck greets her and leans forward to kiss her, but she won’t have this. She pushes him away which makes him say: “Come on, Jade.”  
“No. Don’t talk to me,” Jade demands.  
Beck opens his mouth in protest but that’s the moment Andre quietly says: “She did flirt with you.” Which everyone must have seen. And like always, he didn’t tell her to stop and just let it happen.  
“I didn’t flirt back,” Beck answers, which makes her roll her eyes.  
He can be such an idiot when it’s about all this flirting. Though the girls are even worse. Jade glares over to Romy who looks straight to the board as if the class has already started though their teacher only walks inside at that moment.  
Of course, Romy used the moment, when Jade wasn’t there yet, to get close to Beck. How annoying!  
After class, she still lets Beck kiss her again.

 

The next day, it’s Cat out of the group of friends that hears about Romy first.  
Tina, Romy’s friend, has a locker three to the left from hers and seems shaken to her core when she arrives there. Cat looks at her curiously and finally wants to ask her what has happened, if her pet dog has died whom she has known to be sick for a month now. Cat wouldn’t like that at all and hopes that that isn’t true.  
Before she can ask though, Sonia steps up to Tina: “I heard about Romy.”  
Cat tilts her head. What about Romy?  
“It’s so terrible,” Tina says with a shaky voice.  
“It is. I’m so sorry,” Sonia tells her. “You found her?”  
“I did,” Tina says and Cat immediately feels sad though she doesn’t know anything about it yet. She does ask now though: “What has happened?”  
Tina answers her: “Someone attacked Romy yesterday. We wanted to meet up in the park. We always do that on Wednesday evening.” Cat nods. She knows about that. Tina and Romy always talk happily about that time in the week that they definitely always take for each other as best friends.  
Tina continues: “When I got there, I already heard her call out for me. She was on the ground, holding her back. Someone... rammed something into her or something, right in the lower back, on the right sight. You know... As if someone hit her with... rings on their fingers or something. She hurt so bad and I barely was able to get her to my car to drive her to the hospital. She has... almost holes in her back now. The rings must have had... something pointy on them. I don’t know. It lookes really bad in any case.”  
Cat has long put her hands in front of her mouth in shock. Now, she anxiously asks: “Who did it?”  
Tina sniffs, obviously holding back tears because she is still shocked at what she has seen the prior day. “She doesn’t know. I didn’t see anyone when I got there. She says the attacker was already gone when she was finally able to turn around. She broke down in pain and shock at first of course.”  
“I’m so sorry,” Cat softly says. Because it is. She hopes to never find one of her friends like that.  
Tina shudders lightly and says: “It’s just so awful. I mean... Joe just got attacked, now Romy... not that someone wants to hurt us girls from this school.”

 

Everyone talks about it throughout the day and the next day, Robbie overhears Joana asking Tina if she thinks one of those punk bracelets with peak cones all over them could have made Romy’s wound. Everyone has of course talked about that wound that Tina barely was able to describe. When Joana mentions it, Tina’s eyes widen though and she nods and says that indeed something alike could’ve made that certain wound, probably not worn on the wrist but around the hand to make the punch more hurtful.  
It makes Robbie a little sick. Who gets an idea like that?  
What makes him even sicker is that it quickly makes the round, especially with Tina’s statement, after she has been to the hospital to visit her best friend the prior day, how lucky Romy apparently was that it didn’t hit her kidney, that it barely missed it.  
It doesn’t take the end of the school day until the first person has noticed that Jade actually wore her bracelet on Wednesday when the incident happened. Of course she has some of those and wears them occasionally. As soon as that’s out there, of course everyone also quickly gets to know that Romy also kind of flirted with Beck that Wednesday.  
Most people seem to believe, going into the weekend, that Jade indeed attacked both Josephine and Romy out of revenge. That she finally snapped in a way.


	3. Seriously injured

Romy is back on Monday, but doesn’t want to talk about the incident at all. She has trouble leaning back in her chairs, getting touched in her back at all. But when people ask her about it, she always says, she doesn’t want to talk about it because she has still trouble comprehending the attack.  
Andre may find it weird, but on the other hand... he does get it. Not everyone can just talk on about an attack like that. Still, they get to know that the attacker apparently grabbed her on the upper left arm from behind to hold her in place and then just punched her really hard – most likely really with that certain bracelet around their hand.  
And well... While Romy might not talk about it, everyone else of course still does.  
The talk calms down until the next weekend though.

 

Beck is glad about it. He’s a little annoyed by the people actually believing Jade could have done it by now. It’s not like he has talked to Jade about it. He’s sure she doesn’t care much what all of them think. But Beck just thinks it’s unfair to believe she has done it when she obviously hasn’t.  
He’s sure there are people thinking about it again the next Monday.  
He and Jade are in their dance class and just now everyone is supposed to do certain steps by themselves. It’s there that Erica suddenly is next to Beck and looks at him while she does the steps extremely seductively. She is the best dancer in their class (one of the best in their school) and of course doesn’t really need to practice these few steps now, can easily put more energy into them.  
But the thing is that she really looks at Beck while she does so and... yeah, even Beck gets that she kind of is flirting with him through that. God. And that with Jade right there. Really?  
He turns to see that Jade still is a little bit away from them, because of their previous exercise, where they were expected to move through the whole room.  
But she also sees them now, her look transforms into a glare, she stops with the steps she is supposed to do, and strides up to them.  
While their teacher doesn’t notice, distracted by another student who can’t seem to get the steps right at all, Erica of course does, and promptly jumps back, uttering an almost shocked: “Sorry.”  
The classmates around them can hear it above the music and turn to still see Erica scurry a little away and Jade stopping next to Beck, still glaring at the other girl.  
Beck lies his hand in Jade’s back which earns him a glare as well. Okay, then...  
He turns to the front again, only to see the two guys in front of him exchange a glance with raised eyebrows and somehow he gets the feeling that they remember the attacks on Josephine and Romy. Josephine and Romy who both flirted with Beck the day they got attacked, who both got seen by Jade during that. Their looks seem to wonder if this means that Erica is next.  
Beck can’t help but roll his eyes. There is no evidence at all that those attacks are even connected. And even if they are, there surely must be more similiarities between Josephine and Romy, other reasons why they possibly where attacked. Maybe just because they were easy targets as it’s widely known they each move around in empty parts of parks regularly in the evenings.  
Anyway... Beck is sure Erica doesn’t need to worry. And that these guy probably think she should because of Jade, does annoy him.

 

Erica is still well on Tuesday in school, but she doesn’t come on Wednesday. Andre already hears about it when he arrives in school, well in time for his first class.  
“What’s going on?” he asks a group of girls who are talking about it close to his locker with Beck or his other friends nowhere to be seen whom he would’ve asked otherwise.  
“Apparently, Erica was hurt really bad yesterday evening. She is in the hospital now,” one of them says.  
Andre gets a little sick. Seriously? “Like Jospehine and Romy?”  
“This sounds much worse.”  
But nobody seems to know yet what has happened exactly. Some girls in school, especially in their year, are extremely pale today either way and a little jumpy, including Romy and Josephine.

 

Jade’s mother Caitlyn is always happy when her daughter and she get to have a meal together. It’s not happening all that often. They don’t see each other much in general, especially as Jade grows older. But Caitlyn of course loves her daughter and knows she loves her too.  
At the moment, Caitlyn is working in the afternoons or evenings mainly, so they see even less of each other – though Jade is mostly with Beck at those times anyway.  
Today, they want to eat a late lunch or early dinner together (depending on perspective), before Caitlyn has to go to work. Jade has actually taken the time, isn’t spending time with Beck right after school, like she does so often otherwise.  
Caitlyn wants to start making the food any second now, but at this very moment they are still in a talk which feels good as they also don’t talk too much.  
They get interrupted by the doorbell. Caitlyn opens the door and finds two men in front of it. One looks vaguely familiar. He’s also the one to speak now, introducing himself as Vega, his collague as Spencer, showing police badges. They ask to talk to Jade.  
Caitlyn has a sinking feeling inside of her. She doesn’t know what this could be about. But it’s like she almost expected this to happen some day. For police officers to stand in front of her door and searching for Jade.  
She lets them in for now, though she plans to throw them out if they actually accuse Jade of anything. She would have to call a lawyer then – though she has no idea how to pay for one.  
“Hello, Jade”, Vega says as he walks inside and Caitlyn closes the door behind the two men.  
It sounds like he knows Jade somehow. Caitlyn doesn’t know where Jade has met him before.  
But she sees Jade standing up and crossing her arms in front of her chest, narrowing her eyes at both the officers.  
“What is this about?” her mother asks.  
Vega answers her: “There have been attacks on three of Jade’s classmates within the last three weeks.”  
Caitlyn hasn’t heard about that before. What kind of attacks? Have they been hurt?  
“So?” Jade cuts in.  
Spencer raises his eyebrows at Jade. Vega meanwhile turns to her calmly. He definitely seems like he knows Jade and isn’t too put off by her attitude. Caitlyn suddenly remembers that she has overheard Jade and Beck talk about a Vega before. One of their friends seemed to be named that. This could be the father of that friend, if he also knows Jade.  
He says: “Neither of the three have seen their attacker. But apparently, the rumor is going around that you did all three of them.”  
Caitlyn stares at her daughter. What? Her daughter is supposed to have hurt three of her classmates?  
Jade shortly glances to her, then she clearly states: “I didn’t.”  
Caitlyn considers if she can believe her. But if there’s one thing, Jade doesn’t do, it is lying about her behaviour. She might lie about her feelings, but not about what she does. Whenever the school has called Caitlyn and told her of things Jade did, Jade immediately confirmed when Caitlyn asked her about it afterwards. She owns up to what she does.  
“Would you?” Vega wants to know.  
What kind of question is that? Would she attack someone? She has punched someone before (after they bullied Cat), she has locked her cousin in the basement (after he insulted her), she has pushed a girl from the monkeybars as a child (after she told everybody not to play with Jade). So, yes, certainly, she would attack people. She does. But never without reason, Caitlyn knows that about her daughter. And it also might not be right with those reasons, but it makes another story.  
Jade states again: “I didn’t.”  
“Do you have an alibi for any of those attacks?” Vega checks.  
Jade presses her lips together. Caitlyn isn’t sure if Jade even knows when exactly those supposed attacks took place, if Vega wouldn’t be required to tell her now.  
In any way, she finally has to step in: “Do you have any proof that she did this?”  
“No,” Vega honestly says. “Erica has just been hurt really badly and we want to follow any lead.” He turns back to Jade: “Jade, if there is anything you want to tell us at all, please call me.” He hands her a card, which Jade takes. Then, he also hands one to Caitlyn. “You, too.”  
They don’t stay much longer. Caitlyn closes and then locks the front door behind them. She turns to her daughter. “Jade,” she starts.  
There are so many questions in her head.  
But Jade promptly and harshly says: “Don’t. I’m going to my room. I don’t need any food.”  
Her mother stays back alone, feeling weirdly scared.

Beck is on his laptop on his couch when his phone rings. He sees it’s Jade.  
With a smile, he picks up, always happy to hear from her. He hopes that she has finally eaten with her mother and now has time for him again. Though usually, she would make her mother drop her off at the RV then, before driving to work.  
“Hey, babe.”  
Jade doesn’t greet back. She often doesn’t. But this time, her voice sounds almost distant, as she suddenly says: “The police was just here.”  
“What?” Beck asks, sure he must have misunderstood.  
“Because of the rumors,” Jade only says.  
Beck can’t believe it. “Seriously?” The police is going to Jade because of some dumb rumors? That’s stupid.  
Jade’s voice doesn’t sound desperate, rather cold instead. But Beck gets it. Beck still believes to hear the fear inside of it, as she clearly says: “Beck, I didn’t do it.”  
“I know,” he instantly reponds. “I know, Jade.” A heartbeat, then: “Want me to come over?”  
“Yes.”


	4. Going for it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to this chapter, with will pretty much solve the mystery.  
> I planned this story like this all along, but I seriously debated with myself after I realized how much you love the mystery if I shouldn't change how to tell the story. But I think it makes the most sense like this, for the readers to already know from this chapter onwards. I hope you will like it. :)  
> While I thought about the story like that again, I also realized that I will probably have ten chapters all in all, not just nine. Just so you know.  
> Thank you by the way very much for the comment and the two kudos I got until now. :)  
> Welp. Please enjoy this chapter!

The next day, everyone is still talking about Erica. There are a lot of rumors going around, but what everyone agrees upon, what everyone quickly knows, is that Erica’s right knee got shattered. She walked through the park, coming back home from a friend, Liza, and there, someone apparently came out of the bushes with a baseball bat and hit her knee.  
The pain was blinding, so she also wasn’t able to see her attacker – or forgot if she saw them before getting attacked.  
Robbie gets sick when he hears about all of it; he gets even sicker about the fact that many people promptly talk about Jade again. Some say that nobody can accuse her of this without proof. But many others seem absolutely convinced that she did it. Which is unbelievable.  
“How does she know when to find all of them alone though?” Robbie hears one of them ask. Because if she did this, she also attacked Josephine and Romy.  
“Joe and Romy had routines and everybody knew about those,” Hannah, Josephine’s best friend, answers, who is as pale as those two these days. “And even I knew Erica wanted to meet up with Liza the day before yesterday and wanted to walk home. They talked about it in our Math class, in which Jade also is.”  
Which doesn’t mean anything. Though obviously, everybody knows by now that all three girls have flirted with Beck and have been seen by Jade doing so. And then, they got attacked by someone.  
But Jade can’t have done it. And it’s horrifying as it is, without assuming someone out of their school did it.  
They say that Erica’s knee will never get back to normal. It got shattered so badly that she will have problems for the rest of her life.  
Robbie is the one out of their group of friends to say it: “She is a dancer. They say the doctors aren’t sure she ever will be able to dance like she did before.”  
He sees that that thought also makes Tori, Cat, Andre and Beck sick. And maybe, Jade also seems paler than usual.

 

Sonia needs to pull Joana away at some point. She is openly crying by now and that’s just stupid. She has to get a grip of herself. They all do. Josephine, Hannah, Romy and Joana. But they are all making a big thing out of this, behaving like idiots, making sure they will get caught. She won’t have this.  
And they are actually giving her the fault for this! Like it was! That stupid Erica pulled away. That’s the only reason she hit her knee, instead of just her leg. It’s Erica’s own fault, seriously.  
Sonia won’t have her plan ruined by these idiots. The plan she orchastrated so carefully.  
She got the idea less than a year ago, when Jade was in a play of an older classmate, where her character killed other women after they dated the man she loved. In the end, she also killed the man.  
Killing off other girls of course would be too extreme. But hurting them a little... Sure enough, everyone would find it believable that Jade finally snapped. She has hurt girls before out of jealousy, has pulled hair and scratched faces, before Beck was able to pull her away. Granted, that was mostly still at the beginning of their relationship, but everybody knew she was still extremely jealous.  
And if Jade would start hurting girls, Beck would hate that, right? Beck was a good person. He was the perfect boy. He would hate Jade hurting anyone like that and would finally leave her.  
That was the plan. She knew she would need to get herself accomplices. It was just easier to hurt other girls with their permission, instead of having to hurt them without it – and with the risk of them actually seeing and identifying her. Though she knows if Beck isn’t convinced of leaving Jade after they are all hurt, she will start hurting others, even if the other girls don’t know that yet. But Sonia will make sure to persuade more classmates to flirt with Beck too (even if they will all be scared after all those attacks), will have Jade see them and will then attack them. She knows. And her accomplices don’t need to know yet.  
They are so naive. She needed some time to convince each of them. But they know, just as well as she does, that Beck deserves better than Jade. They of course think they are better – which they aren’t. But she doesn’t need to tell them that yet. They will never have a chance though. Hell, they have flirted with Beck for years now without him even noticing.  
She hasn’t flirted with him for some time now, while he always smiles nicely at her. She has tried herself before.  
She was never worried about this Jade thing though. Nobody marries their high school sweetheart, right? But they are still together now and they only have very few months to go until they graduate. They have to break up now, for Sonia to get her foot into that door.  
She tried getting to him, when they were seperated for some months over a year ago. Instead, he picked Meredith for his first date out of his relationship with Jade. And then got together with Jade on that same date. He apparently wasn’t over her. Sonia will make sure he will be over her soon.  
She has carefully picked her accomplices, has started conversations about this plan without giving too much away at first. By now, they are fully on board.  
She was the one who broke Josephine’s hand that one day, stepping on it with ugly boots like Jade wears them – and wore them that day which they planned.  
They of course also had to make sure Jade wouldn’t have an alibi for that attack, or any other. She especially couldn’t be with Beck, as Beck would then know for sure that it couldn’t have been her. And he needs to believe she did it, for him to leave her.  
So, they had one of them watch her during the attack – and one person Beck, because they also need to make sure she isn’t on the phone with him or something, which they wouldn’t be able to see, looking from a bush in front of her house into her window on the second floor.  
They also watched each of them, while she, Sonia, then punched Romy in the back with a stupid wristband with cones on them, like Jade wears them, around her hand. Tina, Romy’s stupid best friend who isn’t involved in this and doesn’t know anything about it, played her part really well in it. She immediately told everybody what happened, without anyone needing to prompt her much.  
And then came Erica. While the other two just closed their eyes and let it happen, Erica didn’t. They did it in her living room. Erica sat down and Sonia wanted to hit her on top of her leg with the bat. Sonia’s parents were still out. She was supposed to tell them afterwards that she was attacked in the park.  
But Erica opened her eyes when Sonia already swung the bat and then she pulled away at the very last second. Sonia hit her knee without planning to. And now she’s the bitch, right.  
Erica cried out of pain – Josephine and Joana who were with them cried out of shock. Which was just unneccessary.  
They brought Erica to the park, did their best not to be seen. Erica called the ambulance herself from there, because all of them obviously couldn’t be with her. One of them walking into her in the park after she has been injured would’ve been too much of a coincidence.  
Luckily, very few people could’ve seen them as Erica lives right next to the park and noone was around there at that very moment.  
Anyway... Sonia called all of them together afterwards. Joesphine and Joana freaked out as it was and wanted to call the ambulance right away, still in Erica’s living room, ruining their plan. Only she, Sonia, kept a cool head and made sure, Erica would too, as soon as she would get asked about everything.  
Now, she told everyone else to stick to the plan as well. She made sure they knew that they already could go to prison for everything that happened and that they therefore better shut up about it.  
She guesses one of them could let it slip eventually. She can’t have that. She has to get this done. She has to show those girls that it’s worth it. Though obviously none of them will actually get Beck. She will. But at least they will witness Beck falling out of love with Jade, which they all waited for since pretty much Freshman year, when he fell into love with her.  
It’s unbelievable that he is actually still into Jade, though she’s such a bitch. Always so dark and impolite. Always mean, even to Beck. Always demanding from him that he tells her certain things or brings her coffee. Never thankful though Beck deserves every thanks in the world for every step he does. Jade doesn’t respect him. She probably doesn’t even love him, just considers him her property, while he only seem to have eyes for her so much of the time. But well... It will soon be done.  
Sonia is ready to go to all lengths to get her.  
Josephine and Romy both would have preferred their parents not calling the cops because of their injuries and the supposed attacks. But with Erica, of course the police has to be involved now.  
Sonia doesn’t care. She has speculated from the beginning that they would be involved eventually. Of course, depending on how far they would have to go to convince Beck. But Beck is a good person who wants to believe the best. So, they have to go all the way.  
She will make sure, he and everybody else knows that Jade did all of this – even if she didn’t.  
Until now, they haven’t dared to say that they saw her attack them as maybe she has an alibi after all. Maybe, she’s on the phone with one of those awful friends or something, though she doesn’t seem like a person socializing with them at all.  
They can make sure, Jade is home alone, but not if she’s on the phone with anyone. But as long as she isn’t on the phone with Beck, which they can check by also watching him and making sure he isn’t calling anyone... They can make the others unbelievable as well, if anyone is willing to give her an alibi. As long as Beck isn’t on the phone and therefore knows for sure...  
She will have the others hurt her next. And she will say Jade did it.


	5. Interrogation

Jade doesn’t want to draw attention to herself or the situation. She has a sickening feeling inside of her and knows she should just leave and not say a word.  
But seeing Beck smile at another girl when that girl obviously flirts with him... It makes something inside of her explode and she can’t keep it to herself.  
So, she doesn’t want to say anything when she sees Sonia shamelessly flirting with Beck in front of his locker, asking about his role in Sikowitz’ play, which production is finally underway, and giggling like a stupid bitch about everything he says. But she has to tell her to leave him alone.  
“I didn’t mean to do anything,” Sonia says with wide eyes after Jade’s voice harshly cut through her and Beck’s talk.  
“Leave him alone,” Jade just repeats and Sonia quickly does turn around and walks up the stairs.  
Jade feels a lot of the people in the hallway staring, at her of course. Some may be scared. Because they know what happened to the other girls, Jade saw flirting with Beck lately.  
Jade decides to not look at any of them. She glares after Sonia and she knows, she will keep walking to her locker afterwards, ignoring everybody else. Even Beck, that idiot that needs to smile at everyone. Right now, with everything going on. With the police having shown up at Jade’s doorstep less than a week ago.  
But before Jade can walk to her locker, can avert her gaze from Sonia to anywhere else, she watches how the girl turns around, looks to all the people staring at Jade. And how she smirks.  
Coldly, it runs down Jade’s spine, as she turns away and walks to her locker, with Beck, who hasn’t noticed anything, following her.  
And he actually knows what he has done. He can’t understand why Jade’s face just got that much paler, but he does know how Jade feels at the moment.  
“I’m sorry,” he therefore even says.  
Jade is angry at him, but at the moment she doesn’t feel like fighting. She feels powerless and needs to be with him.  
They spend the whole day together and she only drives home very late, driving as quickly as the streets allow. At home, with her mother not home yet, she calls Beck again and stays on the phone with him until she falls asleep.  
She is almost glad when she sees Sonia well the next day in school, though she hates that girl. Nothing has happened to her. Whatever that girl smirked about the previous day.  
That day, Beck rehearses for Sikowitz’ play, which he got cast in a month earlier, about the same time the attacks started, the whole afternoon after school. They often sit in on each other’s rehearsals, but Sikowitz has forbidden anything alike for this play. As if Beck wouldn’t tell Jade anyway what the play is about and what happens in those rehearsals.  
Jade’s mother picks her up from school (as she has gotten to school with Beck in his car) and they eat lunch together, before her mother leaves for work again. Which leaves Jade home alone. Without an alibi, she can’t help thinking herself.  
Her phone rings, when she just starts to panic and wonders if she can go to any of her friends, if they have time and would be okay with her demanding to meet up.  
Cat is calling. “Jade,” the girl immediately says, as soon as Jade has picked up. “I have to tell you what my mother just said to me.”  
Jade blinks but before she can even think to protest, Cat already starts with the story. Well...  
Jade lies down on her bed as she listens. It happens that Cat calls and talks for hours with Jade only reacting to it every now and then, surfing the internet next to it or just lying on the bed. Sometimes, it annoys her, but at other times she also likes Cat talking so excitedly, with so much energy. And that Cat always feels the need to call her, to tell her, not anyone else. Because she knows, Cat doesn’t call anyone else like this, out of the blue and then talking for hours.  
This time, it makes her feel immensely relieved. She is pretty sure that Cat knows what she is doing right now. Cat knows that Beck is at that rehearsal today and Jade’s mother obviously at work. She knows Jade is home alone. She knows how scared Jade is, though Jade tried her best not to show it at all.  
Cat is giving her safety now by babbling on, by being on the phone with her. Just on the phone, so Jade doesn’t have to keep her face and body controlled, because she doesn’t even want to show her fear in front of her best friend. Cat is still there for her.

 

Tori is almost asleep that night when she hears her father coming home. And well... She always says hi to him when she isn’t already asleep. Especially when he works those long hours, comes home way later than he should have. Usually, something bad has happened then and he is always so happy to see her and Trina and their mother.  
It takes a little time as she has already been quite sleepy, but then she truly stands back up and walks from her room to the stairs, without turning the lights on because she knows this house, her home, like the back of her hand.  
She can already hear them talk down in the living room from the top of the stairs. And she stops when she hears her father’s voice saying exhausted: “She said she saw Jade, so they had to arrest her. Her mother got just home from work and of course got her a lawyer.”  
“Oh my god,” Tori hears her mother, while she herself feels in total shock. They can’t talk about any other Jade than Tori’s friend, can they? She got arrested?  
“I know. In the end, they had to let Jade go though.”  
“Why?” Tori’s mother wants to know – just like Tori. She wants to hear the full story.  
But she knows she only can, if she keeps at the top of the stairs. Her father can’t see her. He would never talk to her about this. He only talks about these kind of things, even with specific names and everything, with Tori’s mother. She is also damn good at keeping secrets, wouldn’t tell a soul. And Tori knows her father needs to share, especially when he knows the people himself.  
But he isn’t actually allowed to talk about it too much. Certainly not with Tori, who is a friend of Jade in this case.  
So, she keeps at the top of the stairs and only hopes that her father will tell her mother absolutely everything. She has to know what’s going on.  
“Because she has an alibi,” her father answers. “At least somewhat. She claims she was on the phone with Cat.”  
Again, Tori’s mother thinks like Tori herself and asks the right question: “And was she?”  
“They got Cat and talked to her in another room. Cat confirmed, but my collagues of course also quickly noticed that Cat just... you know... talked on and on.” Tori thought that was a rather polite way to describe Cat. “They barely were able to get a word in. I was able to watch it a little – though obviously, I also wasn’t allowed in the room with her. But I saw how nervous she was. And when they asked if it would be possible that Jade just muted the phone, attacked Sonia and then got back to the phone call, she told them everything she said in that call and to ask Jade what she said.”  
So, there was a new attack. On Sonia. Earlier today, apparently. After Sonia flirted with Beck yesterday morning, which of course quickly was known throughout the school. Tori knows about it without having been in that hallway at the time though girls flirting with Beck and Jade calling them and Beck out on it, usually aren’t news at all.  
Tori wonders how badly Sonia might have been hurt.  
“And?” Tori’s mother prompts her father.  
Her father answers as if he can barely believe it himself: “Jade was able to repeat everything back to them.”  
“She was?” Tori’s mother asks in surprise – exactly what Tori thinks.  
“She was,” her father confirms. “And nobody knows how she could’ve listened to Cat so well while still hurting that other girl. After all, it does take concentration, making sure nobody else is around, attacking someone... Obviously, everybody realized that Cat also couldn’t lie and wouldn’t be able to give Jade an alibi, if they even would have had a chance to agree upon it before. Which is why they let Jade go.”  
“Though that other girl said she saw Jade?”  
Sonia actually saw Jade? She saw her attacking her? Tori gets a little sick.  
“Yes,” her father says. “They plan to look into everything of course. They will watch Jade from now on and probably check once more all the infos about that call. And they will interrogate Sonia again. Maybe, she did saw some girl that looked enough like Jade and with those rumors that apparently go around in school...”  
That has to be the explanation, right? Sonia can’t have actually seen Jade attacking her.  
Quietly, Tori’s mother asks after a moment: “Do you believe, she did it?”  
Tori leans closer. She definitely wants to hear her father’s answer for that. He usually has good instincts, which is one of the reasons he is a good cop.  
“I somehow don’t,” he answers, then, more heavily: “I hope for Tori that she didn’t.”  
“I do, too,” her mother says slowly and then it’s silent., before her mother asks her father if he wants more to eat.  
Tori silently turns around and walks back to her room. God, yes. She hopes it wasn’t Jade too. She doesn’t know what she would do. It would break her heart if Jade would actually be able to do something like these attacks.  
Though yes, she has hurt people before. But not like this, right? She at least would’ve stopped after Erica, right?  
Tori has a troubled night.


	6. Alibi

Sonia is in school the next day. She is wearing a bandage around her left arm, easily visible as she’s only wearing a top. Apparently, the bone in her upper arm is bruised. She has bandaged it almost as if it’s broken.  
Of course, everybody asks her what happaned and Andre can clearly overhear her say, right when he comes to school: “Jade attacked me.”  
Andre stops in his tracks and looks to her as she talks to three other girls.  
“I was shopping right after school and then got home, still in the afternoon and I always use the same alleyway on my way home. Nothing ever happened there. But suddenly, I heard steps behind me and I was still able to turn around a little when she already hit me with a baseball bat against the arm. Obviously, she was shocked that I noticed her, so she didn’t get me like the others. Possibly, I otherwise would be in the hospital like Erica or something. I still saw her running away afterwards. It was definitely Jade.”  
“It can’t have been,” Andre says before he knows it. She just can’t have done it.  
Sonia almost glares at him. “I saw her. I don’t understand why the police didn’t arrest her.”  
Andre guesses that she can only know that because Jade is already in school. Andre is glad to hear it. She can’t go to prison.  
“Maybe, she got herself an alibi for the attacks,” one of the other girls suggests.  
Sonia huffs: “I would like to hear that.”  
And suddenly, there is Cat. Andre hasn’t noticed her before, but she must have walked in on this talk too, now stands next to him. She seems angry and distraught at the same time.  
“She does have an alibi for the attack on you. I talked to her on the phone while it happened!”  
Andre doesn’t know how Cat knows when the attack happened. He will of course find out that she has been questioned by the police, just like Jade, last evening.  
Sonia looks at Cat for a moment, thinking, then she clearly states, without getting into Cat’s claim about that call: “She attacked me.”  
“She didn’t,” Cat loudly answers and Andre has never seen her like that and decides he should take her away with him. To ask her what’s going on and if Jade actually needs alibis by now.

Nobody talks about anything else that day. Sonia makes a big deal out of avoiding Jade and asks the teachers to throw Jade out of their shared classes. The teachers say they can’t do that when nothing is proven yet. Instead, a lot of girls make sure, Sonia is protected, as are Josephine and Romy, who therefore, without a doubt, also must have been attacked by Jade and also act way more scared around her now. (Erica of course still is in the hospital and will still be there for weeks or months probably.)  
Cat’s supposed alibi of course also makes the rounds. Some seem inclined to believe her. Maybe, Sonia hasn’t really seen Jade, has just seen someone like her. Otherwise, the police also surely would have arrested Jade.  
Others say that Cat of course gives her an alibi though – Jade is her best friend for one and also is able to even scare her into doing whatever she wants. Not to mention that Cat might believe Jade has been on the other end of the phone the whole time, but obviously she is able to blab on and on and it’s not like anyone would ever listen to her the whole time through, especially not Jade.  
Tori would like to cut in, every time she hears that, would like to say that Jade was able to repeat back to the police what Cat told her on the phone. But she isn’t supposed to know too much about it, so she tries her best to behave.  
She still starts to tell people to shut up, starting with Hannah and Joana who not only talk bad about Jade but about Cat too, claiming that she wouldn’t even know if Jade would’ve put the phone aside after saying hello, that she is that dumb and oblivious. It’s stupid and mean and it hurts Tori. For Cat and for Jade, so she finally also tells people to shut up about Jade from that point on.  
Andre and Robbie do as well. They seem to get just as angry as Tori about all of it, especially after Cat tells them all about her required visit to the police station and how Jade was arrested beforehand.  
Cat is the angriest at first, then she just gets sad and silent.  
She isn’t the only silent one. Jade and Beck are silent too. Jade doesn’t say a word anymore, not even a harsh comment. She glares when necessary, but nothing more, not even when someone clearly tries to provoke a reaction out of her.  
Tori sometimes has a feeling like Beck wants to say something when the other people in school talk too loudly, but in the end, he also keeps his mouth shut.  
But he constantly has an arm around Jade, as if he’s protecting her.  
Of course, some of the talk is also about him. There are several girls who question loudly how he can stay together with such a jealous violent girl like Jade. And of course, no girl at all tries to get close to him anymore, except for Tori and Cat.  
They sit with Andre and Robbie and Beck and Jade every lunch. The group of friends spend every break together, though they usually don’t do it like that. Robbie is bringing Rex again every day and tries to have him make jokes. Andre sings the lyrics, which he finally found, for his new song. Tori tries to distract the group by talking about her first big music video, that is in post production by now.  
But in the end, they always end up silent, like they never do. They don’t talk about the incidents. Nobody knows what to say.

Tori only dares once, when she is alone with Andre and Robbie the Friday morning after the attack on Sonia, which happened on Tuesday, to ask them silently, so nobody else in school would hear: “You don’t think, Jade did it, do you?”  
“No,” Robbie answers without hesitation.  
“She didn’t,” Andre confirms as well.  
Tori sees they are afraid though. Because something crazy is going on. Sonia still claims with absolute surety that Jade did it. But what’s with Cat saying she was on the phone with Jade? And what’s with them feeling – as Jade’s friend – that she couldn’t do this? Despite all the things she says, all her dark sides and with her already having hurt other people, also out of jealousy.... They know she can’t have done it.  
But what’s happening then? Why does Sonia think she saw her? What if the police believes her more than Cat?  
The thought makes Tori shake inside a little. But if she already feels like this...  
“Do you think she’s scared?”  
Robbie looks at her with wide eyes. Jade scared... That’s actually the scarriest thing, all of them can probably think of. He doesn’t need to answer. Neither needs Andre. They all know, Jade must be scared like hell, even if she would never say that. If she didn’t do it, she must be scared.  
The whole weekend, Tori makes sure to tell her father at any chance she gets that he needs to keep watching over that investigation, that he needs to make sure Jade is handled with respect and care – and that noone judges her by her looks or by her harsh reactions, she only uses to cover her fear.

 

Jade knows Beck would like to scream. He would like to walk up to Sonia and punch her or at least tell her she is crazy if she thinks she actually saw Jade. He would like to walk into the next police station and tell them to do their damn job right. He would like to tell everyone talking bad about Jade to shut up and piss off.  
But this isn’t about what he wants to do. He knows that and Jade is glad he does.  
This is about what she needs him to do right now: to remain calm, to be her absolute rock, to be steady and patient and just keep with her.  
He is. He shows himself as the perfect boyfriend.  
She sleeps over at his place from Saturday to Sunday. Her mother has only agreed after Jade allowed her to drive her there – and promised to make Beck drive her back home. Because Jade isn’t supposed to be alone anymore.  
Jade knows her mother isn’t afraid she will attack another person; her mother actually believes her and only wants to make sure she will have another alibi if it happens again.  
Jade appreciates it, even though she can’t show it. She also appreciates that her friends don’t seem to really doubt her. But she isn’t able to say a word about it. Inside of her, everything seems just frozen.  
Beck has gotten some bottles out of his parents’ house just now, as he didn’t have any drinks in the RV anymore. Now, he’s back with Jade and though he claimed being thirsty before, he isn’t drinking now. He is lying down on the bed again, next to Jade. They have watched TV from there but Jade has turned around to Beck now and they have started kissing, until they haven’t anymore.  
Now, Beck quietly says: “The police is outside again.”  
Jade hasn’t mentioned that she noticed them following her around. But of course, Beck noticed too.  
“Great,” she says sarcastically. Though maybe, it’s for the best. She hasn’t attacked any of those girls. She won’t attack any more. If the police watches her while another girl gets attacked, she is pretty much in the clear.  
Beck looks at her, without saying a word. Gently, he strokes his thumb over her cheek.  
And before she knows it, she asks a question that’s burning inside of her: “Do you ever wonder if I did it after all?”  
She is sure, her mother has wondered, if even for a second. Her friends probably have as well, maybe except Cat. But Beck? Has he ever wondered?  
She isn’t sure she wants to hear the answer. He will be honest because that’s what she requires of him. But what if he did wonder?  
They haven’t talked about any of this. Jade has only told Beck what she needed off of him right now. Otherwise, they have tried to pretend her future and her whole life wasn’t in danger, suddenly.  
“No,” Beck only answers with utmost simplicity. It almost makes Jade smile.  
For a while it’s silent. Beck is still stroking Jade’s cheek and she closes her eyes, enjoying the gentle touch. That’s what she needs right now. This safety, this comfort.  
Only after a moment, Beck raises his voice again: “I do wonder why Sonia claims you did. She seems so sure.”  
Is he really that oblivious? He must have already put some thought into it. She certainly did. And there is only one possible conclusion.  
“Isn’t it obvious?” she answers, opening her eyes again, looking into his. “They want you to break up with me to have a chance with you themselves. They know you can’t stand them getting hurt, especially if I’m the one doing it.”  
Beck looks at her in shock, his hand stopping. He really didn’t get this idea.  
“That’s crazy,” he finally breathes but she sees in his eyes that he instantly realizes that this is very much possible.  
Jade has thought about it for hours and hours. How curiously, the first three girls didn’t saw anything of their attacker, but the rumor about her still got started. About how Sonia smirked after she caught her flirting with Beck and how she now claims she saw Jade attacking her. About how all, Joesphine, Romy, Erica and Sonia, always were after Beck and tried so hard to get his attention for years. She wonders if more girls are involved and if so, how many. Is there anyone in school she can still trust except her friends and Beck?  
What also scares her though: “What is crazy is that they must watch me around the clock to know when I have an alibi. Even though they slipped up with that phone call with Cat.” That also couldn’t have been easy to see for them. She was alone at home in either case, which they must have known. “But... They have to watch me.” After all, it’s not like she’s alone all that much. She spends pretty much all her time with Beck, is over at his place a lot. The attacks happened though when she just got home in the evenings.  
Beck also hasn’t thought about that before, apparently, but now says: “They won’t be able to do that anymore with the police around as well.”  
Jade hopes so. She doesn’t know what kind of officers watch her, if they would acually notice some girls lingering nearby as well. Especially as it’s not like the police has been with her constantly since the attack on Sonia. They just show up every now and then.  
Anyway...  
After another moment, she quietly asks: “Why are you so sure I didn’t do it?”  
Beck seems surprised about the question. As if he doesn’t understand how it can even be a question.  
“You maybe would hurt them, but not like this. You wouldn’t wait for them in a dark ally and... hit them in that way, almost barbaric. Nothing of this whole mess has your fingerprint on it. Not to mention that you would own up to it if you would have done it after all.”  
Jade can’t believe how sure Beck is. And how right he is all the same.  
And though, she obviously asked for an explanation like this, she still rolls her eyes. “Look at you. Considering yourself an expert on me.”  
Beck innocently shrugs. “Well... I think I know you.”  
Of course, he uses her own words against her now. Those words she sang to him a year ago, when they got back together for good. He has done so every now and then since that day.  
And though he smirks like an ass, so over-confident – or maybe exactly because of that –, she has to smile as she draws him into a long and deep kiss.


	7. One quick drive

Another week goes by, but the talk about the incidents of course doesn’t die down so quickly this time.  
Without any of them knowing, except Beck and Jade’s mother, Jade has been questioned twice more by the police, without another result though.  
Sonia, Romy and Jospehine get still protected by the other girls in school (as if that was necessary), while Erica’s condition remains unchanged.  
It’s Wednesday again when Jade hears Beck’s voice between all the others in the main hall, before she even sees him: “Leave me alone.”  
He doesn’t talk loud but his voice sounds a little unnerved. That’s not how he talks to anyone, except his parents or her, provoked.  
This time, he is talking to Hannah, as Jade sees when she’s finally in the hall herself.  
“Come on,” Hannah says, standing way to close to Beck. “You can’t let Jade dictate your life.”  
This time, Beck isn’t having any of it. “Go,” he pointedly says. She hears the anger rise in hisvoice.  
“Just because she doesn’t want you to talk to any girl, doesn’t mean...” she starts again, but he cuts through her: “Shut up!”  
“I’m not afraid of her hurting me,” she says, a little louder.  
Beck isn’t violent. No matter how hard he and Jade fight, he has never even pushed her. She sees that he is too damn close to push Hannah away now, to grab and shake her, to maybe hit her. Because this does make him extremely angry. And he feels powerless with all these rumors about Jade. These rumors he hates so much because he knows that the police could start believing them any second and what would happen with Jade then.  
Jade can’t have him become this way though, so she knows she has to step in. She also knows she shouldn’t. She should leave and keep silent. Nobody saw her yet. Nobody saw her watching Hannah trying to get it on with Beck.  
Now, she cuts through their conversation and immediately every head turns, as if her voice is a warning signal: “You should be. Get away!”  
Hannah isn’t a good actress. Her eyes don’t widen. She knew Jade would come along eventually. She hurries away and Jade feels so damn sick. Nobody else watches her unconvincing act. All eyes are on her, Jade.  
And then, there is Beck: “Jade! I could’ve handled it.”  
“Yeah, sure,” she just drops, before leaving the hall again, not even going to her locker. She hears him shut the door of his own locker loudly.  
Josephine and Romy meanwhile share a gleeful look. Finally, it seems to crumble between those two. Maybe, it was all worth it after all. Even if they will forever regret what happened to Erica... Maybe, Sonia was right in keeping this up, going further with this.

 

It’s one quick drive, she wants to do on her own. Well, a second one. She doesn’t want to be driven around all the time.  
Her mother doesn’t know about this. She hasn’t taken the car to work today, so Jade is free to use it.  
Beck had a short rehearsal again after school and somehow, all her friends offered to drive her home as soon as they heard about it – or to accompany her home as everyone except Andre also don’t have cars.  
That today of all days, another girl flirted with him... but of course it happened like this. Jade knows they are all in on it. And they know, Beck will reahearse once more.  
So she takes up Andre’s offer as he does it in the least obvious way and actually suggests for them to go to a creepy store together which they heard about before and wanted to visit together anyway.  
That’s where they go after school. The store sells weird stuff, especially things you could use as props in horror movies. And some classmates have told them that the store itself is kind of scary. Andre and Jade don’t see it at all and exchange some looks with raised eyebrows while they are in it.  
Though when Andre drives Jade home afterwards, they do talk about the fact that all of their friends except Beck would probably be quite jumpy in that store and that they should totally take them. Beck would also enjoy that, no doubt.  
Andre asks Jade if he should directly drop her off at Beck’s. He texted her that he is back home now. But she says she will drive there on her own as she also has to get back again afterwards. Andre doesn’t seem happy about it, but pretends like everything’s all right.  
Jade immediately gets in her mother’s car, as soon as Andre is gone. She hates how she feels like she should hurry. But yes, Andre could give her an alibi until right this second. Beck will give her the next in a few minutes. She can’t leave enough time in between that could make it possible for her to attack Hannah.  
She takes a deep breath, before she starts the car.  
But everything goes fine. She has never been quicker on the way. Beck also seems dissatisfied that she drove herself, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He knows Jade would be pissed off by any comment and they would start fighting, because they are both scared and could only get that out by lashing out. But they also absolutely can’t start fighting now, out of the exact same reason: Because they are scared and they need each other right now.  
So, she’s glad that he keeps his mouth shut.  
She leaves again late that evening, after they have eaten dinner together. Her mother should be home by now. She just needs to drive back.  
And there it happens. She is already close to her home, just a street away, when a car blocks her way. Some stupid guy apparently decided to turn in the middle of the street. Granted: A street not many people drive through – them two are the only ones there right now. But it almost seems like he has waited for her car to show up, before he started turning. And he makes a really big deal out of it, stops and goes, stops and goes... With leaving her no room at all to pass him.  
For a few seconds, she is only annoyed. Then, she feels like being dipped in ice. She knows it’s happening right now. They are hurting Hannah right now and she doesn’t have an alibi. This guy will keep her occupied for just the right amount of time. Jade knows Hannah lives nearby. It will be easy enough to claim that she somehow saw her on her way home and then just did whatever to her.  
She also knows Beck would lie for her and claim she left exactly those minutes later. Maybe, her mother would lie too and claim she came earlier than she will now. But she can’t have them do that.  
She feels a blinding fear and then honks the horn of the car. That makes the other car stop for a few more seconds, then it gets going again.  
She honks once more. Will that make anyone look out of the window? Will that make anyone living around, notice her and the situation? So they will know she was here?  
She looks into her rear mirrow. Maybe, she should turn around herself and use another way to get home. But the other ways are longer. She would still need more minutes to get home than usual.  
Where is the police anyway? Why aren’t they following her at the moment?  
She takes a deep breath, then gets out of the car. “Get out of the way,” she yells at the person in the car, who is indeed a guy. One she doesn’t know at all. Not one of the girls from school. (She of course can’t know that this is an older cousin of Josephine’s, who thinks it’s just a prank on a friend, who apparently gets angry so easily, which is oh so funny.)  
The guy lifts his hands from the stirring wheel in surrender and almost as if apologizing. Still, he gets back to only very slowly and badly turning his car around.  
“Who are you?” she yells, but doesn’t get an answer.  
She gets back into her car, closes the door. What is she supposed to do?  
She should call someone. She should definitly call someone, anyone, to give her an alibi.  
Almost shaking she searches for her phone in her handbag and has just found it, when the guy finally passes her with his car. The road is free again.  
She throws her phone on the passanger’s seat again and quickly starts driving. But she’s sure it’s done.  
What should she do? Should she call the police? To warn them? But won’t that make her look even more guilty? Maybe she could call Tori’s father... He’s a cop too and has been on this investigation at first...  
She feels absolutely powerless, even when she’s back home and her mother greets her with a smile.

 

The next morning, before school, the police picks her up and takes her to the station. Hannah is in the hospital with a concussion. She apparently got pushed down and hit her head on a bench. No witnesses, of course, but Hannah claims she saw Jade before the other girl pushed her.  
The police officers seem sceptical of this story though. Jade tells them the exact time of leaving Beck and arriving at her mother’s. And she tells them about that guy. They says they will check those times – they do with her mother right away – and will ask the people living at the street if they heard her that evening honking, if they maybe saw her.  
Either way, they say, if she is right about the times... she couldn’t have planned the attack on Hannah at all. And how likely would it have been to see the girl that flirted with her boyfriend that morning conincidentally on her way home that evening? And to then attack her without anyone seeing?  
Also, a doctor has apparently told them that she can’t imagine Hannah seeing her attacker before she got pushed. Not from the angle of her injury and the way she must have fallen down. It isn’t impossible, but highly unlikely.  
And with her lawyer and her mother present, it’s surprisingly easy this time around to make them let her go again.  
Jade only notices Tori’s father on the way out. The man pulls her aside when her lawyer is still talking to her mother, and tells her to make sure she will always be around her friends from now on. Yeah, no kidding. But he even offers for her to stay with his family for a while. An offer she doesn’t take, but which lets her still feel somewhat warm inside.


	8. What if

Jade isn’t in school on Thursday, just like Hannah isn’t. Everyone seems to immediately notice and quickly, everybody knows that Hannah indeed has been injured and that Jade did it. Hannah has, just like Sonia, seen Jade do it, as her best friend Josephine knows to report.  
By first break, everybody is sure that Jade got arrested this time and that that’s why she isn’t in school.  
The mood is weird. Some seem glad that she finally got arrested, they seem to almost celebrate, but mostly, people seem horrified that Jade actually did all of this, that she snapped after all those years. That one of their classmates hurt others and now will go to prison because of it.  
The group of friends doesn’t say a word the whole day. They don’t know what to say. One girl tells Tori that she should’ve seen how awful Jade is right away. Tori feels helpless and just leaves her standing there.  
She shares a lot of worried looks with Andre, Robbie and Cat. All of them are pale. But not like Beck who just stares into empty spaces, lost.  
Tori would like to give him comforting words but she’s sick of worry herself.  
Jade can’t have done this, can she?  
Tori tries to play through it in her head, tries to imagine all the attacks with Jade doing it. She tries to imagine how her friend must have felt. She remembers how angry Jade truly gets when girls flirt with Beck.  
Could she have done all of this after all? Why else should Sonia and Hannah claim she did it? Or are they just so sure she did it that they believe they saw her – or say they saw her though they saw nobody to make sure she gets arrested? Especially after Jade does have an alibi for that attack on Sonia through Cat. Cat wouldn’t lie, would she?  
Tori is confused and scared. She doesn’t get what’s going on. But the thought that always stays with her, even when she plays through the attacks in her mind, is that Jade can’t have done it.  
She knows, her friends are sure of that too, even now, after the attack on Hannah.

Tori thinks about calling Jade, when she’s home, but she doesn’t dare. When her father gets home, she asks him what’s going on with Jade and the investigation. He tells her that he can’t talk to her about it.  
When she asks him if Jade got arrested, he answers: “Not yet.” Which relieves her for a second, because that means she isn’t in prison right now. Then, she’s worried again.  
Her father looks at her for another moment, then he lies his hand on her shoulder and says in a gentle voice: “If you do believe she’s innocent, try being around her. Just in case there is another attack.”  
Tori nods. She tried before, offered Jade to meet up etc. Just like Andre, Robbie and Cat did. But Jade won’t let herself forced to spend time.

 

On Friday, Jade is back in school, while Hannah is still in the hospital. As soon as she walks into the building, everybody in the hallway grows silent and stares at her.  
Finally, some boy musters up all his courage and asks: “How are you allowed to be here?”  
Jade glares at him. “Shut up or I’ll kill you!”  
That gets the wanted result: Nobody comes up to her again. At the same time though, it makes everyone believe even more that she did indeed attack those girls. How could they believe anything else? With now two girls saying that they saw Jade do it and her still talking like this.  
Beck obviously isn’t happy about Jade’s reaction. Their friends hear him tell her that she should let him say stuff like that and that her doing it makes her sound extremely guilty – which makes her snap at him to not annoy her, before they go their seperate ways. Though they have barely parted in school, when they could help it, since Sonia claimed Jade did it, since the rumors grew so strong.  
It’s the next break. Tori, Andre and Robbie had the class together but Cat joins them out of her own right at the beginning of the break. And they just start talking about their classes (unenthusiatically, because neither cares much about school with this Jade-thing going on), while walking through the hallways together, when they hear Jade: “You said you didn’t wonder!”  
It sound accusingly and Beck answers annoyed: “Well, maybe I am.”  
They round the corner and can see them now. Many of their classmates stop and start watching them. Their friends do too, horrified.  
“Seriously?” Jade asks, angry now.  
“Seriously,” Beck answers. “What if you did it after all?”  
Cat’s eyes widen. They notice how Jade’s face falls a little, before it gets hard.  
“I didn’t. Beck!”  
“The police seems to think so,” Beck says.  
Jade huffs and says sarcastically: “That’s why they let me go, right.”  
“They questioned you five times now!” Beck almost yells.  
Tori, Robbie and Andre exchange looks. They haven’t known that Jade already talked to the police five times. They know about two. That time after the attack on Sonia, when Cat gave her an alibi. And yesterday morning, after the attack on Hannah, when Jade didn’t come to school.  
“And they never put me in prision!” Jade yells back.  
“Because they don’t have enough proof,” Beck answers. “That doesn’t mean that you didn’t do it!”  
Jade crosses her arms in front of her chest. “You have do be kidding me. If you don’t even trust me...”  
Beck interrupts her: “How could I? This is what you do, Jade.”  
“Fuck off!” Jade immediately replies. “Never talk to me again!”  
“What does that mean?”  
“That we’re done!”  
“Well, best idea you ever had! Fine with me.”  
And both leave into opposite directions, Beck hurrying off past the group of friends.  
They exchange another look, now with Cat as well, then Cat runs after Jade. Tori follows her quickly, while Andre and Robbie go after Beck.  
Beck has gone to his next class, in which the rest of the group also is, except Jade.  
There are only two other people in the classroom as of now. Those two can’t have seen the argument just now, the break-up of Beck and Jade. But they will hear about it soon enough. It won’t make a difference if they hear about it right away, by Andre and Robbie talking to Beck about it, or later, as the rest of the school will know about it rather sooner than later.  
Robbie is the one, who urgently says: “She didn’t do it. You have to know that.”  
“Don’t talk about it. Leave me alone.”  
“But,” Andre starts but Beck cuts through right away: “Leave it be.”  
Andre has never heard Beck sound this defiant and almost cold. He decides it’s best to leave it for now. Though he’s sure that he will talk to Beck about this later. When Beck has actually realized what has happened, that he broke up with Jade over this stupid thing that can’t be true.  
He shares another look with Robbie, who shrugs helplessly, then they sit down in their usual seat, not saying another word.  
Cat and Tori are meanwhile with Jade, who has also run off to her next class.  
“You know he doesn’t mean it like that,” Tori tries to explain to her. Beck can’t believe that Jade has done any of it. If Beck starts to doubt Jade... shouldn’t they all?  
“I don’t care,” she answers in a harsh voice.  
“Jade,” Cat puts in, softly.  
But Jade glares at them. “I. Don’t. Care.”  
Tori swallows hard. Cat presses her lips together and suddenly turns around and stomps off.  
Tori helplessly looks at Jade once more, then follows Cat, though she would like to stay with Jade and comfort her. But she has never been able to comfort Jade before. Jade doesn’t accept comfort by anyone but Beck – and that’s over as of now.  
Cat stomps all the way to their next class, where the boys are already sitting, Andre and Robbie looking as unsure as Tori feels.  
“What are you doing?” Cat pretty much screams at Beck, as soon as she sees him. “You know she didn’t do it! I was on the phone with her!”  
Beck isn’t scared off by Cat’s anger, though nobody has ever seen her like this and Robbie, Andre and Tori are definitely taken aback and worried.  
Calmly, Beck responds: “I don’t want to hear anything about it.”  
“You should,” Cat says. “You should hear everything about it, you stupid...”  
“Cat, come on,” Tori cuts through, before Cat, who never insults anyone, can get into it with Beck. She pulls her aside, takes her to her chair and with crossed arms the red-haired girl drops there, glaring at Beck like her best friend would do right now if she was here.  
Tori sits down between Beck and Cat and can’t help to also lean to Beck, saying quietly: “Though I also think you’re making a big mistake here.”  
“It’s none of your business though,” Beck answers. Tori has never heard him that cold.


	9. Last attack

Nothing will happen. Jade knows that nothing will happen.  
It’s still Friday. Nobody has dared flirting with Beck that very same day. Though Jade is sure as hell that that will start up coming Monday. All those stupid, idiotic girls will fall over themselves to finally get to him. Great.  
But for now, she is safe. Nobody will get hurt. And it’s fine for her to drive to the nearest grocery store to get the one ingredient her mother is missing for cooking a late dinner.  
Her mother of course says she can also cook something else or they can drive together, but Jade is annoyed as it is and just wants to get something, anything, done herself. She can’t lock herself in, because she is afraid. That’s not who she is. Not to mention that nobody can get hurt today; she wouldn’t have a motive.  
So, she tells her mother to let her do this, and it’s not like her mother has much choice if she wants them to eat dinner together at all: She lets her go, giving her the key for the car. And she says she will already start preparing dinner then, as far as she can get without the missing ingredient, which sounds good.  
Jade knows nothing will happen, when she’s clicking the car open with the key. She is almost at the door now. She will just quickly drive to get a grocery.  
But suddenly, she feels that someone is behind her. She doesn’t have enough time to turn around, to defend herself at all. They grab her by both arms, a hand gets pressed over her mouth and she gets pulled into the bushes at the side of her very own front yard.  
She tries to throw the people off, lets car key and phone fall in the process, which she both held in her hands, and finally at least bites the hand away that’s on her mouth. A girl makes a noise, then she gets pushed onto the ground and they all step into her view.  
Romy and Joana, whom she both knows from school, have apparently grabbed her and pushed her to the ground. But they are not alone. Sonia is with them as well and has immediately picked up the car key and her phone. She throws the key to Jade now, but keeps her phone with a disgusting smirk. Jade notices that she wears gloves, with which you can still use a touchscreen.  
They gang up on her now, corner her against the hedge that grows against their fence. Jade watches Romy pull out a gun. Only shortly, fear flares up inside of Jade. But no, this gun won’t be real. Yes, Romy is shaking, but not enough. She wouldn’t be able to point a gun at anyone like this. It’s a fake, in hope to keep Jade under control with it.  
She takes a deep breath, before she turns to Joana, snarling: “So you are part of this, too.” A girl who hasn’t been hurt yet.  
Sonia snorts: “As if you any idea of what’s going on.”  
Jade glares at her, while Sonia turns to the phone in her hand. The screen of Jade’s phone isn’t locked. It’s unnecessary as she never leaves it lying around anywhere. Now, Sonia has easy access.  
“Let’s see,” Sonia says as she starts looking around in the phone. “Here he is. Beck.” And she starts typing and saying it out loud as if she is having the time of her life. She’s texting him that they need to talk and that he has to come to the park that’s closest to Jade’s home.  
Then, she hits send and turns back to Jade, who is still on the ground and waiting for what’s to happen, for an explanation what’s going on, so that she can do something about it.  
“Beck’s nice but if he’s still ready to talk to you, he should get another lesson about you. He has to learn you’re bad news. If he’s smart, he stays away and everything will be fine.”  
Jade tries to understand, then asks: “He will get hurt?”  
Sonia smirks again. “He will. You will break one of his bones as well.”  
Jade feels her heart pounding in her chest. “You are crazy. You can’t do that.” They can’t, especially as they obviously aren’t even too careful with each other, looking at Erica. What will they do to Beck?  
“Just watch,” Sonia says, then directed to Joana: “Now shut her up.”  
Fear flares up inside of Jade and stays this time. “Don’t touch him! We’re not even...”  
But in that moment, Joana stuffs something inside of her mouth that makes her gag, and puts tape over her mouth. Jade tries to defend herself, but Romy promptly puts the gun away again (that’s of course not real) and helps Joana, holds Jade down. Jade is strong, but both of them together manage to keep her in control.  
Sonia meanwhile seems really bored by Jade trying to defend herself and looks back into the phone. “Let’s see what else they text each other. Oh, look what kind of bitch you are. He texted you last night that he loves you and you didn’t answer anything.”  
Because she called him to tell him she loves him too. But even if she could, she would never tell Sonia or anyone that.  
Sonia looks at her as if she was digusted. “Of course, he got sick of you. He tried so hard and you... What else did he write?”  
And how glad Jade is that she never texted Beck or anyone about her fear with all of this. How powerless she felt, how out of control and how sick that made her. To read that would give Sonia all the satisfaction in the world, Jade realizes. She luckily won’t give her that.  
But Joana raises her voice anyway: “You can’t read his messages.” As if reading Beck’s messages is so much worse than hurting each other and now even Beck, just so he will fall out of love with Jade. As if that would be the biggest crime.  
Sonia only shortly looks at her, then rolls her eyes, but probably doesn’t want to alienate her. At least, when the phone vibrates in her hand, she only quickly reads the incoming message.  
“He answered ‘okay’,” she says and then throws the phone on the ground next to the car keys, before pulling out her own: “I’ll text Hannah that he’s on the way.”  
Jade doesn’t know that Hannah has just been released from the hospital and is waiting with Josephine in the nearby park. She just knows that Beck is apparently on the way to that place and that they want to hurt him and that she can do nothing about it.  
She can hear the loud music out of her neighbor’s home. Even if she would try to scream behind her gag, it’s unlikely anybody will hear her. Not with all the other sounds of the neighbor, not with the neighborhood she lives in with her mother.  
Her trying to scream will just make Sonia smirk at her again, triumphantly, because she will notice how scared Jade is.  
And she will never be able to throw all three of them off. She can just wait and see what happens.  
Maybe, her mother will notice that the car is still in the driveway and will come out to search for her any moment now – but why should she? She will be in the kitchen, starting to prepare the food.  
And if the police would watch her, like they god damn should, they would long be here, would disturb the scene. But once more they aren’t there when she needs them to fucking help her.  
She closes her eyes for a moment, anger but primarily fear and panic inside of her. And one more thought: Beck.

 

Beck has no idea what’s going on, but he decided to come. Who knows why Jade wants to talk to him here, but he’ll probably find out.  
He’s going to the exact spot in the park, that has been mentioned in the text, but Jade isn’t there. As is nobody else. He has seen a few people at the entrance of the park, but not around here.  
He’s pulling out his phone, checking if Jade has texted him once more, when he suddenly feels an enormous pain in his back.  
He falls forward, blindly, as the pain spreads through his whole body. He falls on his knees, then all the way down on his stomach, when his hands don’t catch his fall, instead directly grabbing his back.  
It feels like someone has hit him with a baseball bat on the left side of his back. Not as strongly as possible, but still, it hurts terribly. Though through the pain, he is sure that that’s exactly what has happened. He has been hit by a baseball bat.  
He wants to turn around but his body isn’t obeying him.  
And then, there is Jade’s voice, above him. “That’s what you get for leaving me.”  
He makes a painful noise and then hears footsteps leaving. He can’t figure out if it’s more than one pair.  
For a moment, he closes his eyes, then he takes a deep breath, clenches his jaw, before he finally turns around. He doesn’t see anyone anymore. He does see that he has let go of his phone and it has dropped to the ground right next to him.  
With too much pain he reaches over, grabs it and unlocks the screen. He sees Jade’s last message, after he has just checked if she texted him once more.  
He takes another shakey breath, before he leaves their chain and calls his parents instead.


	10. Arrest

When Jade comes to school next Monday, everybody watches her as much as they did before the weekend. There are still a lot that are quite afraid of her, though others say that she won’t hurt you as long as you’re not flirting with Beck. There are a few that assume that Jade will totally loose it now though, after the break-up, and that nobody will be safe.  
Only a few girls exchange long and confused looks when Jade strides into school and to her locker.  
It’s Sonia, who finally steps up to Jade and raises her voice loudly, to make sure everyone notices: “What are you still doing here? Why haven’t you been arrested?”  
Jade notices Hannah, Joana, Romy and Josephine around as well, now also stepping closer to not miss anything. She wonders, if there are more than those five involved, except Erica.  
Of course, they now have waited in the main hall. They wouldn’t have expected Jade to be here and maybe even guessed, Beck wouldn’t be and would be in the hospital instead. But they probably wanted to wait for Andre, Tori, Cat and Robbie who all had their lockers in this hall as well or close-by, always met in this hall. Maybe, they wanted to try to overhear how much they already knew. They knew nothing.  
But Jade notices that Andre and Tori are already there, now turning curiously from Tori’s locker to them. And there are Cat and Robbie approaching too, coming into school from another entrance.  
Jade calmly turns back to Sonia, the stupid bitch, and cocks an eyebrow: “Why should I have been?”  
“I heard you now even got Beck into the hospital,” Sonia says.  
“Oh, did I?” Jade asks. She would like to hear this story. How Sonia is able to explain about knowing about Beck having been hurt, when not even his friends know about it. And if she doesn’t have anything to do with it.  
“Yes,” Sonia answers defiantely, of course having an explanation ready, though a quite bad one: “My cousin works as a nurse in the hospital Beck is in now. One of his rips is broken and some others are bruised.”  
Out of the corner of her eye, Jade notices Josephine lowering her gaze. Was she the one using that baseball bat on Beck?  
She also notices many eyes, that are watching, widening now. Obviously, nobody else has heard about Beck until now.  
But she focuses back on Sonia. “And your cousin naturally told you as they recognized him and thought you’d be interested.”  
Sonia just thinks about it for a second. “Well... He knows him from the play Beck and I did together and knows we’re friends.”  
“Friends. Right.” As if.  
Jade looks to his real friends who stand together now, watching, not understanding what’s going on, wondering if Beck has indeed be hurt now. But they do look as if they are ready to step in, just in case.  
Sonia gets a little red, maybe because she also knows she is no friend of Beck’s – or because she gets angry at Jade. She says in any case: “That’s not the point here anyway. You did that to him. You should have been arrested!”  
Jade rolls her eyes, tries to act as bored as she can though yes, she is a little anxious. But she didn’t give Sonia the satisfaction of seeing her too scared Friday evening. She won’t give her the satisfaction of showing her that she makes her uncomfortable now.  
“I didn’t do it as you very well know. After all, you three” – she indicates her, Romy and Joana with a wave of her hand – “have been with me at that time and held me down while you used my phone to text Beck.”  
Sonia sneers. “Oh, is that so? Now trying to get out of this with a claim like that? Nobody will believe you.”  
Jade is sure that most of the people watching think the same. But honestly... as long as she doesn’t get arrested... “Like I care. The thing is though... I wouldn’t have had a reason to hurt Beck.”  
Sonia looks a little confused, then: “Of course you had. You guys broke up and that made you angry.”  
“We never broke up,” Jade calmly states. “We just pretended to see what you would do then.”

It was on Thursday, when Jade was released from the police again and Beck finally was home from school. They spent time together in the RV, holding each other, both scared. Yes, the police seemed to doubt the girls too, but at least after another attack, they would have to arrest Jade. They had no choice. Maybe, they would even have to arrest her now, just not today.  
“I wonder how many girls are involved and how far they will still go,” Beck whispered after a while, in which they just held each other in silence on his bed.  
“I don’t care,” Jade claimed. They should just kill each other.   
Beck looked worried though. “What if they’ll start hurting girls that don’t know about their plan?” Jade was close to pushing him away, just because this shouldn’t have been about any other girls. But Beck actually kept speaking, earnestly: “Or worse: What if they get you into prison? The police will have to arrest someone soon.”  
Jade swallowed thickly. She couldn’t go to prison. Not for something she didn’t do.  
Beck went with his fingers through her hair, thinking, then he decided: “We just shouldn’t be apart anymore, so I can always be your alibi.”  
“How horrible,” Jade commented because she needs her space. Beck and she almost spend all their time together anyway, but sometimes she needs some time for herself – and Beck for himself as well. Not to mention that she already tried being constantly around people since the police first spoke to her. They still managed to hurt Erica, Sonia and now Hannah while Jade wasn’t around anyone, just once on the phone with someone who told the police so.  
She continued: “And then they will use the time while one of us is in the bathroom or something.” They would find a way to still have attacks. To finally make Beck break up with her. To have him to themselves.  
Wait. There was a possible solution there.  
“You should break up with me,” she said, breaking apart from him and sitting up.  
He immediately sat up as well. “No! I never would.”  
“You should,” she insisted. “Not for real. But they will stop with all of it and instead start flirting with you like crazy. Let’s see if they can ever decide who gets dips on you. And I will try to behave and not kill them while I watch them do that – and then, we can finally say we never really broke up, but I obviously didn’t do anything to anyone, though I had to be just as jealous. Obviously I didn’t snap then or whatever...”  
Beck looked at her for a moment, thoughtful, then: “They will say you only did it and behaved yourself to convince me and it’s not for real.”  
Which was true. Still. “But maybe, it will help the police to definitely see there’s something else going on. I could tell them right away that we will do this. If those girls start flirting with you like it’s the end of the world, it might also be easier to figure out who is part of all of this. They will be the first to try.”  
Again, Beck looked at her for a while, before he shrugged and said gently: “I still would like to spend all my time with you.”  
Jade knew that feeling, but it was decided now. They shared a kiss, a silent promise that this wouldn’t actually hurt them.  
They are good actors. Of course, they were easily able to stage a break-up for everybody to see the next day.

Now, there is a brief moment of horror in Sonia’s eyes. That wouldn’t have been part of the plan. Then, she seems to decide that Jade is lying. “Yeah, nice story.”  
But then, there is Beck’s voice, clearly: “It’s true.”  
Beck has walked through the doors, unnoticed by everyone as there are still a lot of students arriving on the scene and getting drawn in.  
Romy, who is closest to him of the involved girls, immediately asks him: “Beck. How are you?” She steps up to him, wants to touch his arm.  
He quickly passes her by though and quite harshly tells her: “Keep your fingers off of me.”  
He walks up to Jade and they share a gentle kiss.  
“Everything okay?” Jade asks him quietly, not even touching the left side of his back, knowing it will hurt him.  
He nods and then whispers back: “With you?”  
She just shrugs.  
Sonia interrupts them anyway, bewildered. “You can’t be serious, Beck! After everything she did?”  
“After everything you did,” Beck corrects. “I trust Jade.”  
The other involved girls share an almost scared look, as if they get there’s so much more going on. Everyone else in the hall seems confused.  
Sonia pulls an angry face. “How can you? You know she broke your rip!”  
Beck tilts his head and with all the calmness in the world, asks: “How would I know?”  
“She...” Sonia starts but then stops. She can’t know any proof if she isn’t involved. She can’t know about Jade’s supposed text and her voice in the park. Because her cousin, the nurse, possibly can’t have known about that as well, unlike about the broken rip, an information she must have asked him about, saying she heard something terrible happened to Beck.  
Beck raises his eyebrows. “Because she ordered me there and I heard her voice? Well, you can’t have watched her at all over the weekend, possibly because you didn’t want her to tell the police and them to find you around her. Otherwise you would have seen that she was with me in the hospital most of the weekend and she had time to tell me everything about how you caught her Friday evening and sent that message from her phone.”  
Now the girls all seem to panic inside. Jade likes to see it written across their faces.  
Only Sonia does her best to get this back where they want it: “But you just said you heard her voice while she hurt you.”  
“Too bad for you that Jade and I rehearse every one of our plays with each other and go to every performance if we can. I know that she said that line in a play about a year ago. And it was filmed and you had access to the tape. Maybe, you got that idea for this scheme through that play with Jade acting out a character killing other women out of jealousy and finally the guy. I immediately recognized the line and the tone she said it in. She did a brilliant job in that role.”  
He turns to Jade with a smile. Jade smirks back and they share another short kiss.  
Sure enough, that line was in that play. And it didn’t even fit perfectly for the situation at hand. But these girls obviously expected Beck to break up sooner or later. Now, it was actually Jade who said the words (though they also wanted Beck to be the one to say them, but when they acted it out, it just went over Jade’s lips and it was way more natural than Beck doing it). But the girls must have decided that they broke up with each other more or less and that Beck wouldn’t wonder about Jade claiming that he left her and therefore deserves to be hurt as well. Well... If they would have broken up like that, Jade definitely would’ve felt like it was Beck’s fault and him leaving her. Especially with him not trusting her anymore.  
Sonia is really angry now. “You know she’s a horrible person and you deserve better.”  
“Like you?” Beck asks coldly. “Hurting each other and finally me to make me leave the girl I love? Yeah, right. You are all awful human beings.”  
He also looks at the other girls, he knows involved.  
And that breaks Josephine, who suddenly bursts out: “It wasn’t my idea, Beck! I just...”  
The bomb was dropped. All their classmates seem absolutely shocked.  
The girls don’t seem to notice. Joana states, with tears in her eyes: “I told the others we should stop after Sonia accidently hurt Erica like that!”  
Sonia turns to her and spits out: “Shut up! You were on board!”  
“We did it for you, Beck,” Romy meanwhile says and Hannah agrees: “You shouldn’t be together with a girl like that!”  
Beck is disgusted but there is no need for him to say anything anymore. Police officers burst into the school; there have been two in plainclothes in the group of students and teachers watching. They have given the sign to the ones waiting outside.  
All the other students make way, surprised and shocked, while the officers arrest the girls.  
Tori’s father is the one to step up to Beck and Jade, smiling. “I think we got a few confessions. Well done!”  
It was also him, whom they called that Friday evening. When Jade was alone, she called Beck first, who already waited for the ambulance with his parents. She hurried to the hospital, where they met up, then they called Tori’s father to tell him everything. Because they felt like they could trust him, like he would listen and would believe them, unlike some of the other officers, Jade had to deal with before.  
And over the weekend, they have talked to him about this idea that they quickly had. To keep playing it out, to see what the girls would say, if Jade would be in school, still not arrested. Obviously, that was very successful.  
Now, everyone is talking again. While they have silently followed the conversation before, now it kind of has exploded and everyone tries to make sense of what just happened, while simultaneously sharing their thoughts about it.  
Beck and Jade kiss again and then another time.  
They only break apart, when their friends step up to them and Andre says, shaking his head: “They are crazy.”  
None of them have known any of this, or even guessed it. Not even Tori, as her father hold his tongue in front of her, though she talked to him about it all through the weekend again, begged him to make sure everything was going fair for Jade – even when he told her that he isn’t on her case anymore as he’s too close to it due to her.  
“They are,” she now says. “I can’t believe them.”  
“I’m glad it’s over,” Robbie says, watching Jade.  
It’s Cat who finally charges forward, totally relieved, and hugs Jade tight.  
Jade makes an ‘ugh’, but Beck actually then hugs both of them and the others join in.  
Well, Jade guesses she can let them. They really were there for her, in some ways. In the ways she needed. Just being with her.  
She will never forget that. But she will especially never forget, how much Beck trusted her, how he never doubted her once, how he stood with her.  
She turns to him, when her friends finally break apart from her again. He smiles at her, also so relieved, and she can’t help but smile back and kiss him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!  
> I'm not all that into author’s note at the end because I like for you, in case you decide to drop a comment, to do that directectly with the last words of the chapter still in mind. But I have to say this and couldn’t do it before to not spoil anything:  
> When I came into this fandom to write fics, I shortly looked what else there is here. And I found a few stories where something bad was going on and everyone thought Jade did it. Everyone, including Jade’s friends but especially also Beck. I liked the drama but... I want Beck and Jade to trust each other beyond doubt. That is how I got this idea. I wasn’t so sure where to go with their friends for some time but I decided to also have them trust her for the bigger part. Because I am a sucker for people trusting each other.  
> So, yeah, there was never any danger of Beck actually mistrusting Jade in this story, because him trusting her was the whole point of the story – which I obviously couldn’t say before because of the break-up of it all. ;)  
> I hope the ending is now fitting for you guys and that noone got disappointed because they would’ve loved the drama of real fights etc more. And I hope that nobody stopped reading when Beck and Jade broke up because they also dislike Beck mistrusting Jade and they didn’t believe it could’ve been a ruse in this story.  
> Now, thank you so much everyone for reading this story, for the kudos but especially for the comments! You are awesome!


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